Turkey, Et. Al.

'Tis the end of our Thanksgiving weekend too, and it has been a very nice one. This also marks the first time Jess and I have celebrated Thanksgiving by staying home and not traveling across the country and driving ourselves crazy. I gotta say, if you can swing it, Thanksgiving at home is a pretty good way to go. Though you do have to cook for yourselves.

Wednesday was prep day, and like any good father, I just assumed I would have no time to do anything the next day (babies are unpredictable like that) and did whatever I could. Our spread was a little more modest, but I did manage to brine the turkey and set up for both green bean and Sweet potato casserole on Wednesday. Thursday I cooked, and having a little turkey breast to cook instead of a huge honking Turkey makes all the difference, let me tell you. Ever cook a turkey in an hour? It's a little less iconic on the table, but white meat is all we really want anyway, so it worked out. Then a couple of casseroles, some Stove Top stuffing, can-shaped cranberry sauce (the best) and some brown-n-serve rolls and we were in business. Everything was delicious, and we even bought ourselves a few pies to sustain ourselves during dessert. Of course, those pies had been missing a few wedges since we had been trying them out earlier in the week to make sure they were, um, ripe.

Friday was pretty sedate, though notable because it rained, which is always nice when you can get some of that in Texas. I had the bright idea to go get some discount turkey, but there weren't any notable markdowns so we just picked up some random stuff and came home. We're still undecided about Christmas lights, whether or not we actually want to put them up, and the fact that the ground was all wet meant we didn't want to go trudging around in the yard, so we just went on a few walks and played with Tyler a lot. And a few video games, I won't lie.

Saturday I decided to knock the last thing off my long weekend to-do list and finish my latest song. I've been working on the (unofficial) Ticom Geomatics theme song for a while and had the music and lyrics all written, but I hadn't been able to record the lyrics yet because...I've been busy playing video games. So I convinced myself I wasn't allowed to play Saint's Row until the song was done, and then Jess was nice enough to watch Tyler so I could do some recording.

It's still fairly low production value, I personally think it sounds like I'm in a Karaoke Bar, but it's functional, and a worthwhile proof of concept. Maybe I can get some Ticom musicians to help me with a more professional sounding version, starting with the singer. I'm not amazing. I'll post it up in a bit, but if you get desperate, or I forget, you can e-mail me and I’ll send it to you.

Then today was Judo. Our sensei, who just got promoted to 8th degree black belt (one of only 5 in the COUNTRY) decided to have a little seminar, and so I went and Jessie came to watch. There were only about 8 of us there, but it was great fun, good education, and excellent exercise, clocking in at 3 hours of judo, which ain't bad. After that, we've been at home and just fussing around with Tyler and trying to get him to stay awake until his bedtime. I think we've managed to skype with pretty much everyone on my skype list this weekend, so you've all seen his most recent antics. Lots of crawling, getting into things he shouldn't, and eating puffs like it's going out of style.

-N